He looked at the monsters before him. The one whose hand he had just cut off had already fully regenerated. He exhaled to calm his nerves and then charged.
One lunged at him with clawed hands. He sidestepped and slashed across its chest, causing dark blood to spray out from the wound. But before he could follow up, another attacked from his left. He barely managed to block with his sword, the impact sending tremors up his arm.
A third monster broke away from the group, racing towards the flying capsule in the distance.
"Not happening," Cipher muttered, activating Phantom Step. He flickered across the battlefield and intercepted it, driving his blade through its back. It screeched and collapsed, but even as it fell, he could see its wounds already beginning to close.
The other four converged on him. He spun, parrying a strike from one while kicking another back. Even with Maya’s buffs, he was just barely keeping up with them. The Haste made him faster, the Mass Blessing strengthened his attacks, and Purification increased his resistance to demonic attacks.
But even with all that and them having the slow debuff, they were still two whole ranks above him. The higher one climbed, the higher the difference in stats between ranks was. While D to C was just 20 stats difference, the difference from B to A was 80 and from A to S was 160.
It was a good idea to have the others run while he held them off. If the whole team was here, he didn’t know if they could hold the monsters off whilst protecting them. And even if they managed to destroy the monsters with Maya’s magic, with how that parent monster spawned them with no effort, he wouldn’t be surprised if it could spawn a few hundred more.
He ducked under a wild swing and countered with a slash to the creature’s legs. It stumbled but didn’t fall. Another came at him from behind. He twisted to face it, but he was a fraction too slow.
A fist slammed into his stomach. The impact knocked the air from his lungs and sent him flying backward, his body tumbling through the air. Before he could recover, another monster was already there. It kicked him hard, launching him even higher into the sky.
He barely had time to process what was happening before a third monster jumped up to meet him. Its leg came down like a hammer, smashing into him and sending him plummeting back to earth. He crashed into the ground with extreme force, digging up a crater in the dirt.
That had destroyed his Overkill shield completely, he thought, gasping for breath.
At that moment, another monster was already charging towards him, its grotesque form closing the distance rapidly.
He smiled. "Catch you later, losers," he said.
And with that, he vanished.
...
Maya flew the metal capsule through the air, her concentration absolute. Below them, the ground erupted as massive tentacles burst forth, writhing and reaching for them. She moved left, narrowly avoiding one. Another shot up from the wall to the right, she dove to avoid it and increased the speed of the capsule.
"The safe zone is up ahead!" she called out.
More tentacles emerged before them, forming a forest of writhing flesh. She concentrated her Mana Manipulation to the limit, allowing her to easily weave between the tentacles.
"Everyone, brace for impact!" she shouted as they approached the initial building.
Since the safe zone building was directly in contact with the control room building, she didn’t bother avoiding it and smashed directly into it. Glass and debris exploded around them.
At the same time, one of the tentacles caught the capsule. It wrapped around it and squeezed. Causing the metal to crumple like paper under its grip.
Before they could be crushed, Selene punched the front of the capsule, shattering it open. She grabbed the other three in her arms and leaped out, landing hard and immediately breaking into a sprint. Tentacles erupted from the ground all around her, but she dodged them easily thanks to the Battle Instinct skill she had received from cipher.
She was just a few inches from the door when suddenly, a tentacle descended from above. It wrapped around Maya, yanking her from Selene’s grasp at the very last second when she and the others jumped through the safe zone door.
Selene spun around, about to go back.
"~I got it," Cipher’s voice entered her head through Voice Transmission.
He appeared upside down on the roof. It’s a good thing I fast travelled here and not the safe zone, cipher thought as he swung his sword, severing the tentacle in one clean strike. He caught Maya in his arms mid-air and flew straight through the safe zone door, landing beside the others just as it sealed shut behind them.
...
Cipher and the team appeared outside the gate.
He waved his hand, creating another metal capsule.
"Maya, fly the rest of the team to HQ," he said.
"What about you?" she asked.
"I’ll be going on ahead," he said. "Don’t bother looking for me after getting back. Just take a rest. I’ll contact you later."
With that, he flew away.
He needed to talk to the Chairman about what they had discovered in the gate.
A few minutes later, he arrived and went straight to the Chairman’s office.
About an hour later, Cipher walked out. His expression was serious.
After having a talk with the Chairman, they had decided to discuss this matter later with the heads of the major guilds. Although he had proposed they lock the gate, the Chairman was against this. If they just went around locking all dangerous gates, where would they draw the line? After all, each gate had a world-destroying danger in it, meaning all gates were dangerous.
Cipher understood this point of view. Gate 2998 and the Murim world were fundamentally different. Unless he could show that this gate’s boss monster had the ability to retain memories of past loops and would attack anyone who entered even if they went the scenario route, then this gate would remain open.
Still, the two agreed on imposing a temporary restriction until Cipher conducted an investigation to see if the scenario route was safe. For this, he was going to go in solo and see if the monster would remember him and attack, or if it would attack at any point during the scenario run. For this, he would have to wait until his Fast Travel came off cooldown so he could escape whenever he wanted.
At that time, he arrived at Iris’s lab and pushed the door open.
"You’re back," she said, looking up from her workplace. "That’s faster than I expected," she added.
"Yeah, stuff happened," he said.
"Is everything okay?" she asked in a concerned voice.
"Yeah, everything is fine," he said.
"That aside, I might’ve discovered something interesting,"
"Something interesting?" she asked.
"That’s right. Are the robots you make alive?"